We’ve all been there before… accidentally hit the “reply-all” at an innappropriate time, do the time zone conversion wrong and don’t show up for the big meeting, forget to do a 3rd spell check before an email newsletter gets blasted out to 2 million subscribers.

Most of the time, these types of mistakes are either brushed off or overlooked because, hey… they happen.

Simple Global Error

However, as you may have heard this weekend… a simple mistake by a Google employee essentially banned the entire internet for about an hour.

It was later explained in a Google Blog Post that it was a simple error made by an employee, who mistakingly put in a “/” instead of an actual domain name. Essentially, marking the entire internet as Malware.

Give That Man a Raise.

Now, why would I say to give that man a raise? Well, first and foremost, I certainly hope he didn’t loose his job over this. These kinds of mistakes happen and if Google seriously doesn’t have the safeguards in place to prevent this type of thing from happening… it’s their own fault.

He should get a raise, or at least a bonus, for the Millions of dollars worth of free publicity they’re recieving over this. Not to mention the amount of exposure to the fact that they actually mark malicious sites for you… how many people do you think actually knew about that?

This story has been on all the major Tech Blogs, Reuters.com, and CNN.com… so literally, Millions of dollars worth of free publicity.

Reacting to the Unexpected

Ok… Ok… I know this is a fluke and not something he should be given a raise for. We don’t want to reward carelessness. But, at the same time it just goes to show that you never know when a tragedy could turn into an opportunity. So, always be prepared.